Disco’s glory days were a kaleidoscope of yes

Long before raves and EDM, free love and inclusiveness were stayin’ alive on the dance floor

Women at the Electric Circus discotheque, New York, 1979. (Waring Abbott/Getty Images)

Emerging from its urban working-class origins in the early 1970s, disco got real big real quick. By mid-decade, Barry White and Donna Summer songs were topping the charts, supplanting rock on the airwaves, infuriating judgmental fathers to no end, and eliciting antipathy from midwesterners — and then from a nationwide cohort — that to many felt like dog-whistle racism and homophobia. In 1977, John Travolta edged a version of disco into the mainstream with his depiction of a Bay Ridge working boy turned club king in Saturday Night Fever. Despite its whitewashed cast and competitive dance-off plotline, the film got one thing right: disco was as New York as pizza and buybacks. Manhattan was the pulsing, throbbing hub of the music’s infernal energy, and clubs like Studio 54 and Le Jardin were its proving grounds.

People disco dancing at Studio 54, New York, 1977. (Waring Abbott/Getty Images)

But the high didn’t last long. By the early eighties a backlash was forming. The record industry was slumping, and many blamed disco for the downturn. Meanwhile, a Reagan-era resurgence of conservatism and the rise of the religious right paralleled criticism of the hedonism associated with discotheque culture.

These visceral photos by Waring Abbott are a testament to the transgressive momentum of a genre born to die. And maybe that’s okay. After all, culture always looks better in hindsight. In the moment, in the mix, one might have an inkling of what’s cool, but it’s not until nostalgia kicks in that we truly realize what we had (or missed out on). If disco lives today, it’s in the legacy of electronic dance music, which emerged in the eighties as a similarly safe space for inclusive notions of community, dance, and indulgence. “Psychologically I reach a climax,” said a DJ in a 1976 UPI report on the spread of disco, echoing the music’s function as similar to that of modern-day EDM. Another told UPI, “To get 2,000 people into one mood, it’s just tremendous.”

Dance floor at the Copacabana, New York, 1979. (Photo by Waring Abbott/Getty Images)

Studio 54, New York, 1977. (Waring Abbott/Getty Images)

Woman at a New York City disco club in 1980. (Waring Abbott/Getty Images)

Disco DJs, New York, 1979. (Waring Abbott/Getty Images)

Elderly people at a disco club in 1978. (Waring Abbott/Getty Images)

People dancing at a party for Gloria Gaynor at the Le Jardin disco, New York City, 1975. (Waring Abbott/Getty Images)

Studio 54, New York, 1978. (Waring Abbott/Getty Images)

Club Xenon, New York, 1979. (Waring Abbott/Getty Images)

Dancer at a disco club, New York, 1980. (Waring Abbott/Getty Images)

A crowd in the hall of a disco club, New York, 1979. (Waring Abbott/Getty Images)

(left) Club Xenon, New York, 1978. | (right) Studio 54, New York, 1977. (Waring Abbott/Getty Images)

Couple at Le Jardin, New York, 1975. (Waring Abbott/Getty Images)

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